1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data communication system and a data communication method for sending and receiving electronic mail (hereinafter referred to as “e-mail”) between electronic devices. More particularly, the invention relates to a data communication system and a data communication method for sending and receiving e-mail between electronic devices by an e-mail system using transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) as a communication protocol.
2. Description of the Related Art
Information can be transmitted and received between communication apparatuses via a communication network, such as the Internet or Bluetooth. For example, image information can be sent from a transmitting terminal, such as a cellular telephone, to a receiving terminal, such as a personal computer via a communication network.
Hitherto, however, the following problem is presented when data, such as an image captured by a digital camera, is attached to e-mail and sent. In order to add certain information to the above-described data (image), predetermined software or hardware must be implemented in an electronic device (digital camera) for transmitting the data. If it is desired that, for example, an image to be attached to e-mail be edited, it must be edited by using image editing software or hardware before being transmitted.
However, if such an editing function or device is provided to electronic devices other than personal computers, for example, to a so-called “mobile machine”, such as a cellular telephone, the development and the implementation of the mobile machines becomes burdensome. Such an editing function or device also hampers the implementation of smaller and lighter mobile machines.
Even if such a function or device is implemented on the mobile machines, when the editing function is to be upgraded, such upgrading must be performed for all the commercially available machines. That is, it is difficult to speedily and easily upgrade applications implemented on the mobile machines.
It is suspected that the operability of such mobile machines would be very poor. Unlike personal computers, mobile machines are not provided with a keyboard or a mouse as a user interface. In practice, it is thus very difficult to smoothly perform complicated operations, such as an editing operation, with a limited number of buttons.